


Just Don't Sing That Song

by Jamie_Aizen, KS_Claw, Sylphidine_Gallimaufry



Series: Footlights and Frontispieces, Monsters and Manifolds [2]
Category: Guardians of Childhood & Related Fandoms, Nightmare Dork University - Fandom, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Jack is not going to make it easy for you, M/M, NDU Stagefright, NDU WinterNight, New York City, Nightmare Dork University, Piki you have so far to go but you're getting there, Tallulah is a good godmother, strange fruit from a twisted tree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 00:49:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20300725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jamie_Aizen/pseuds/Jamie_Aizen, https://archiveofourown.org/users/KS_Claw/pseuds/KS_Claw, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylphidine_Gallimaufry/pseuds/Sylphidine_Gallimaufry
Summary: An embarrassment of riches, or an embarrassment of relatives? Jack finally gets Piki to tell him how Piki has managed to live a far more luxurious lifestyle than Pitch.





	Just Don't Sing That Song

**Author's Note:**

> A Nightmare Dork University snippet based on idea exchanges on Tumblr and Discord between [Jamie_Aizen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jamie_Aizen/pseuds/Jamie_Aizen), [KS_Claw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KS_Claw/pseuds/KS_Claw), and [Sylphidine_Gallimaufry](https//archiveofourown.org/users/Sylphidine_Gallimaufry).

“You own this house.”

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

“You’ve owned it for almost a decade.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t just live here and rent a floor or two. You **_OWN_** it.”

“Yes, Jack.”

“The whole house.”

Piki sighed and repeated, “Yes, Jack.”

“And your aunt is ‘Cruella De Vil’? Really?”

“Not really my aunt. She’s my father’s cousin, which makes her my second cousin, but we’ve always called her ‘Aunt Tallulah’, if we knew what was good for us. She’s my godmother.”

“Your _godmother_ is Tallulah Deyvill, the fashion designer, and she _gave_ you this house.”

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

* * *

In Piki’s youth, his father had taken bitter pleasure in sardonically recounting his cousin’s rise to infamy to their frequent party guests. “Ran off to London when she was nineteen with Roger Deyvill, of a good old Yorkshire family, just to leave behind the name of Black. Drove him to drink, divorced him, kept his name. It had been good for business, so she said.”

Good enough for business, anyway, that she now ran her own fashion house here in the States, waving aside the allegations that she was banned from travel in the UK due to accusations of animal cruelty in her designs at the start of her career. “It was the Eighties, darling. I was very young, very rich, and very bored.” She had gained respectability by the time Piki and Pitch were born, and the Deyvill name carried enough cachet that their parents overlooked the old scandal and named Tallulah one of the four godparents.

Piki had always liked her, even though as a child he sometimes picked up the feeling that he wasn’t supposed to. But she had always made time to invite him to tea whenever she was back in town in Manhattan, and she always, always treated him like a person, not as part of a matched set.

* * *

Jack said now, “I never quite got that whole social register thing you and Pitch had going on when we were at school. but maybe I understand a bit better these days.”

He glanced over at Piki with an unreadable expression, and Piki made himself look back at him, trying to project a calmness he wasn’t sure he could maintain. He tried to see Jack as the Blacks would see him. 

Jack’s hair still fell over his eyes in much the way it had when he was back in college, but its unruliness seemed more artful than untidy. The collar of his dark blue sweater had crisp white dress shirt points peeking out, and both showed the cut and fit of good tailoring. He looked exactly like the neat, trim young professional that rich parents expected to be teaching their darlings at private school.

A teacher, though, no matter how well dressed and no matter how prestigious the elementary school, was definitely not in the same social stratum as the Blacks.

Piki did not give a fig, nowadays, for his parents’ ideas of social strata. Aunt Tallulah had seen to that.

The old Piki would have been babbling and tripping all over himself to apologize for keeping such a secret from his angel, his muse, his beloved. The Piki of today knew that he had to let Jack absorb this new information if they were ever to have a mature relationship.

He was very relieved when Jack’s face creased into the smile that Piki loved so well. Jack leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “Cruella De Vil, huh. So when can I meet the old fossil?”

Piki found himself grinning back and replied, “Just don’t sing that song. She **_HATES_** it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Credit for the notion of Cruella de Vil as a Black cousin goes to [KS_Claw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KS_Claw/pseuds/KS_Claw), as seen in [More bizarre family members for the NDU crowd](https://ksclaw.tumblr.com/post/166652689622/more-bizarre-family-members-for-the-ndu-crowd).
> 
> Credit for Tallulah [Cruella] taking an active godmother role in Piki's life goes to [Jamie_Aizen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jamie_Aizen/pseuds/Jamie_Aizen), as seen in [30 Days of Nightmare Dorks](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18309887/chapters/43749928).
> 
> Tallulah as an OC first appears in a story by [ Sylphidine_Gallimaufry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylphidine_Gallimaufry), called[Your First Memory Of All](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13638222).


End file.
